


In the Dark of the Night

by tolakasa



Series: This Christmas Day 'verse [20]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 07:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16782733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolakasa/pseuds/tolakasa
Summary: Sam thought he had prepared for all possible contingencies.  When is he going to learn?





	In the Dark of the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Art by the lovely [supernutjapan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernutjapan/pseuds/supernutjapan).

Visiting hours on the maternity floor were strict, thanks to fears about baby-nappings, but they didn't apply to new fathers. That was why Sam had a bracelet with little duckies to match the ones Hannah and Marianne wore, with a chip inside that allowed him back on the floor after hours. Fathers were actually encouraged to stay overnight, at least on the first night, especially first-time fathers. It wasn't like he had any pressing reason to go back to an empty condo; the only things that still needed to be set up were the car seats, and he could do that tomorrow afternoon, after the sisters started arriving.

Besides, if they had another baby—Hannah might have her heart set on four, but Sam wasn't letting her talk him into that until he saw how well they handled one—he probably wouldn't get to do this. Maybe somebody would be willing to take Marianne overnight, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to rely on that.

Exhaustion finally caught up with Hannah not long after Anne left, maybe half an hour after Dean and Marcy took Ananda home. She didn't even wake up when dinner was brought in. Sam was surprised she'd made it this long, to be honest, considering she couldn't have gotten very much sleep last night and hadn't taken a nap this afternoon like he had. He still felt vaguely guilty about that, but it hadn't been intentional. Besides, even from bed, Hannah was perfectly capable of waking him up if she resented it.

He did eat her dinner, though. Third had brought her a hefty sandwich earlier, so it wasn't like he was depriving her, and they weren't going to just leave it there for when she did wake up. Besides, the nurse said he could.

Sam was tired, and his fingers ached a bit—but it was mostly sleep deprivation, not any kind of real exhaustion, and he still had things to do, the kind of things that were hard to accomplish with people underfoot. He hadn't gotten any but the most basic protections up after Hannah had been assigned a room: some wards lightly scratched into the paint, a piece of jade stuck under the bassinet mattress, a jade statuette on the nightstand that they'd claimed was a birthing talisman, and a line of salt along the windowsill. Now, with nobody looking over his shoulder or wanting to hold the baby, he could spend time finding all the best places to hide more jade. In the cabinets, mostly, out of sight. It was cheap, flawed stuff, barely sellable, but unlike some stones, jade didn't have to be perfect to work its mojo. It also meant that it wasn't a big deal if they forgot some.

There wasn't a lot he could do in the way of demon-warding—too much traffic for a salt line at the door—but he did jot down some runes in front of the door with a grease pencil that was just dark enough to be mistaken for the fake woodgrain of the flooring and reinforced the salt line at the window. A handful of protective herbs and shells got scattered under the bed; the janitor would probably think they were nuts, but they'd be safely home by then. A couple of charm bags, one in the bassinet and one under Hannah's pillow, and that was done. There just wasn't a lot more that _could_ be done in a place this public.

There were a few more mundane tasks, too. Officially, Third had been in charge of sending pictures to family and posting announcements on social media, but Sam had his own orders on that front: Ellen had demanded baby pictures as soon as she got the arrival text, Missouri wanted pictures of him and Marianne, and Bobby was so confusingly cranky about the whole thing that Sam didn't know whether he should send pictures or a plane ticket.

In the middle of all that, Sam was interrupted by a well-meaning nurse who gave him a lecture on diapering so condescending that he actually caught himself looking around for his psych professor. It was a _diaper_ , it wasn't _that_ complicated. And that comment about how he wasn't always going to be able to put it off on Mommy, like he wasn't changing the baby while Hannah was lying there asleep....

And then, almost exactly when he expected she would, Marianne woke up hungry. There was one of the ready-to-use bottles left from this afternoon; he needed to ask for some more, but it would wait.

Another nurse came in while he was feeding the baby. "That's sweet," she said, wrapping a blood pressure cuff around Hannah's arm, "but you should have woken up her mom for that."

Hannah hadn't even twitched when the nurse started manhandling her arm. That meant she was good and gone, and nothing short of an explosion was going to force her awake. Maybe not even that. "She was up for over twenty-four hours straight," he said instead. Sam wasn't absolutely sure on the number, but it was a good guess. All he knew for certain was that Hannah had waited until the contractions were four minutes apart before waking him up, just to avoid another false alarm, which meant she'd probably been feeling them before he went to bed. She'd definitely not gotten any naps once they got here. "Besides, this might be her last chance for awhile."

"Bottles can confuse the baby," the nurse said, looking disapproving. "They're easier to suck."

It took a minute to understand what she meant. "When Hannah threatens somebody, she generally means it." The nurse gave him a look. "Check the delivery notes."

"Okay." She finished with the blood pressure cuff, then opened her laptop to call up Hannah's chart and put the numbers in—and read the notes. Her eyes got wide. "Eviscerate her with her own teeth? Damn."

"She believes in specificity."

The nurse gave him a definite side-eye. "You must have a very interesting marriage."

He laughed. "You have no idea."

"In that case, we'll just let Mommy nap awhile longer." She clicked the computer shut and came over to him. "You've done this before, haven't you?"

"Um, no. She's my first." Not that the Reynoldses hadn't been trying to shove babies at him since he first met them, but before he moved down here, he'd been able to avoid most of it. He and Hannah had gotten together in something of a baby gap; the youngest grandchildren before Marianne were toddlers. "I don't have a lot of experience with babies, actually."

"In that case, you're doing amazing. You're going to be a great babysitter, Daddy."

He frowned. "Babysitter?"

"For Mom. When you get home from work, you can help out."

"And here I thought we were _both_ her parents," Sam said dryly. The nurse blinked stupidly at him, but then realized what exactly she'd said and had the good sense to look embarrassed. "And not that it's any of your business, but _she's_ the one going back to work, and _I'm_ the one staying home."

The poor woman muttered an apology and slunk out.

Babysitter. Jesus. Marianne was his kid, too. Was he radiating some special kind of new daddy incompetence or something?

He would have been perfectly fine holding Marianne for hours, but she eventually went back to sleep, his elbow started to cramp, and the ache in his broken finger finally became too much. He tucked her back into the bassinet, adjusting that ridiculous hat—he and Andy were going to have _words_ —and went to dig out the bottle of Aleve in Hannah's bag. They'd offered him a prescription, but he'd been in a hurry to get back to Hannah, and it hadn't hurt all that much at the time, thanks to adrenaline and embarrassment.

It wasn't very late, and he didn't take that much, but as soon as he sat back down, weariness smacked him. He closed the room door to block out the worst of the hospital noise, turned out the overhead lights and dimmed the lamp, and settled on the remarkably comfortable built-in with Hannah's spare pillow and a thin hospital blanket and promptly fell asleep.

***

That little bit of leftover childhood training roused him into drowsy wariness when a figure came quietly into the room, just enough that he cracked open his eyes to look. Scrubs and an ID badge; one of the nurses, probably doing a vitals check. She'd gotten past the wardings without any trouble, and Hannah wasn't making any more noise than she normally did when wakened in the middle of the night. She left the door partly open when she left, but that was all right, and he let himself drift back into sleep.

" _LET GO OF ME!_ "

Sam was out of his makeshift bed and halfway across the room before he realized he was moving. A baby was screaming—one close, and others more distant, along with a chorus of more adult protests from the hall and other rooms.

Hannah was sitting up in bed, eyes open but clearly not seeing the hospital room, and somehow she'd gotten Marianne. Had she done it in her sleep somehow? But how had she gotten all the way out of bed and back without waking him? "Hannah!"

Hannah looked down, as if she wasn't even aware that she was holding the baby. It gave him an opening, and Sam snatched Marianne away. The baby was screaming, but she wasn't hurt, she was hardly even out of her swaddling, so he just set her back down in her bassinet. She'd be safe there. Hannah, on the other hand—

"You can't have me!" she shouted, and a fist went flying.

He managed to duck, and grabbed for her hands. She was fighting something, but— Was she even _awake?_

He caught one of her arms, but missed the other, and her free hand slammed right into his ribs. He reeled backwards—it had been a _long_ time since he took a blow that hard—and fell backwards onto the built-in, cracking his head against the windowsill. "Jesus," he muttered, shaking his head to clear it.

Then he saw Hannah's hand going for the IV. If she yanked that out—

He lunged for the bed again, and managed to get both arms this time. "Get off me!" she shouted, bucking. "I'm not fucking dead yet!"

"I—can—tell— _Dammit, Hannah, wake up!_ "

"Get off me!" she shouted again, and tried to kick at him. The sheets were still tucked in, so she couldn't get free of them. If she kept thrashing like this, though, that wouldn't hold long. She might still be sore, but if she didn't even know where she was, pain wouldn't stop her either, and he couldn't get a really good grip on her with the bed rail still up—

The door slammed open and half the nurses ran in—and stopped, just staring. "Get me something to calm her down!" he yelled.

"We can't—"

"Does it look like she can make an informed decision right now?" he snapped. One of the nurses dashed out.

The oldest nurse gave him a condescending look. "It'll get into her milk—"

" _I don't care!_ " The rail went down—one of them must have accidentally hit the catch—which gave him a little more room to maneuver, right as she was pulling back to try to hit him again. He had to block with his left hand, which sent pain lancing through the broken fingers. He swore, hoping she hadn't just crippled his hand.

The swearing seemed to wake her up, at least a little. "S-Sam?"

Thank God. "Yeah, Hannah, it's me. It's me." He glimpsed the nurse coming back in, a syringe in her hand.

Hannah quit struggling so blindly, but the panic wasn't completely gone. "I don't— What—"

"Just a bad dream." He had her pinned down enough that he could sit on the edge of the bed beside her—still holding her arms, but a little more gently. "That's all. It's just a dream. It's okay. You're safe."

For a second, he thought she was with him, but then she pulled away from him again. "Where's my ring?" she demanded. She seemed to recognize him, but _not_ that they were in a poltergeist-proofed room. "I need my ring! It's not safe! I can't—"

"It's right here." She'd threaded her rings on a cord as a makeshift necklace when her fingers started swelling too much to wear them; the blessed jade in her engagement ring offered too much protection to just stuff it in a box. He reached for her hand and pressed it against them. "See? Right here, Hannah, right here. You're safe."

Her hand clenched on it, and she sagged against him. He put his arms around her, as non-threateningly as he could manage—which pinned both arms in place. He nodded at the nurse with the syringe. She dashed over, found the IV, and injected something into it.

"Sam? What—"

"It's just something to help calm you down," he said, but it was already working. Her eyes were glazing, her muscles relaxing.

"Don' let it get me...."

"Nothing's getting you. Ever."

"Don'...don' wanna be...." That trailed off. He eased her back onto the bed. She was still clutching her rings, even drugged.

Not a nightmare. At least, not _just_ a nightmare. Nightmares tended to make her horny, not violent; she wanted distraction and she wanted it _then_. No, something else had triggered in her head. And when she started coming out of it, the noise—the noise _she_ was making, as much as his swearing and the baby's screaming—must have made her think _poltergeist_.

Except it _couldn't_ be a poltergeist. No poltergeist could get into this room, not with the sheer weight of jade they'd brought. Hannah had had that bag packed before she even picked a hospital.

He was pulling up her gown and refastening it before he realized what it implied, what he'd seen in those first panicked moments: the bed raised to support her in a sitting position, one breast exposed, and she hadn't just been holding Marianne, the baby had been tucked half under her arm in a football hold. The _only_ reason Marianne hadn't gone flying was because of a pillow wedged between Hannah and the bed rail to support that arm.

Someone had tried to get her to nurse.

_This_ was why she was so dead set against breastfeeding.

_Oh, God. Hannah, why didn't you just_ tell _me?_

Sam dug into the bag for another piece of jade. The cord with her rings might not take the stress if she kept clutching at it that way, and if she lost them, she'd never forgive herself. He gently pried her fingers loose enough that he could slide one of the bigger pieces into her hand. As he'd hoped, her grip shifted, and her fingers clenched over the new piece. "Atta girl," he murmured, bringing her arm down beside her and tucking the covers over her.

Now for the hard part.

The nurse who'd given Hannah the injection, a young woman who couldn't be more than a couple of years out of nursing school, was getting her ears blistered by an older woman—the one who had argued with him about giving Hannah anything. There were additional lines on her ID badge; maybe she was the nightshift supervisor.

"Leave her alone," he ordered, and the older nurse actually stopped. "Which one of you gave her Marianne?"

The young one cringed, and the older one practically sneered at him. "I did."

"Why?"

"The longer she waits, the worse it'll be! They should have made her latch at delivery!"

It was a pity Hannah wasn't awake to threaten to eviscerate _this_ bitch with her own teeth. "She doesn't want to breastfeed," he ground out, teeth clenched, "and I _know_ that's written in her chart." Hannah must have signed that waiver at least six times before they got to the hospital this morning, and he was pretty sure he'd seen it at least once since the delivery.

"That's irrelevant."

What? How the hell were Hannah's own wishes _irrelevant?_ "I beg your pardon?"

"Breastfeeding is best for your child, and your wife needs to at least make an attempt before she leaves. Maybe you don't care about your child, but we're not going to let you endanger—"

" _And this didn't?_ " he roared, and Marianne screamed. "She could have _killed_ Marianne! What if she'd dropped her?"

"Mothers don't—"

"They do when they're half asleep and don't even know that they're holding a baby! And don't give me that bullshit about making an attempt! You didn't wake her up because you _knew_ she wouldn't say yes if you did! You got her just awake enough that you could bully her and then you _left_ her! You could at least have woken _me_ to keep an eye on things, you sorry _bitch!_ "

"I will have you removed, sir, if you continue abusing the nursing staff."

Oh, she was one of _those_. Self-righteous—

"Your baby needs the colostrum, and your wife needs to take care of her child properly. If she doesn't at least make an attempt, we will be within our rights to call DSS and have the baby removed—"

No wonder people said they "saw red." For a second, the world actually vanished in a flood of crimson, broken only by the sound of balloons popping. "Did you just threaten to take our daughter away?" he asked, stuffing the telekinesis down before it got out of control. The last thing he needed right now was to throw one of these idiots out the window. Not that he didn't have justification, but it'd be a lot easier to explain if he did it with muscle and not his mind.

The pack of nurses still lingering in the doorway heard something in his voice that their leader clearly didn't, because they started backing out. The bitch, not so much. "Yes, sir, I did. I will not let your wife's vanity and your own stupidity endanger your child."

Oh, that was _it_. He drew himself to his full height, summoning his coldest stare, and took a step closer. She didn't back down, but she did shrink back into herself a little. "I want you out of this room. Only her—" He pointed at the nurse who had brought Hannah the injection.

"Crystal," she supplied nervously.

"Crystal is the only one who comes back in here on this shift the rest of Hannah's stay."

"Your wife is not Crystal's patient, and you have no authority—"

"If any of the nightshift _but_ Crystal comes into this room, I will sue this hospital _and you_ for everything you and your malpractice insurance is worth." He kept his voice even—as he'd learned from his in-laws, bland could be a thousand times more frightening than rage. Not that he could do _pure_ bland with his scar, but the touch of menace tended to make people pay attention. "And if _anybody_ else touches my wife or daughter without permission, I will have that person charged with assault, and _then_ I will make sure you are not only fired but blacklisted in three states."

"You can't—"

"My wife's parents are Edward and Anne Reynolds. _Try me_."

She went white.

For the benefit of the nurses still in earshot, he added, "If you go down to the big plaque by the front door that lists the Board of Trustees, you'll find their names. If you look at the big plaque with the corporate donors, you'll find Reynolds Carolina Enterprises—their company—near the top. I'm fairly certain those same names are on thank-you plaques near several very large, very expensive pieces of equipment. Do you understand _precisely_ how much hell I can rain down on you if you continue to fuck with my family?" He hoped that was comprehension in her eyes. "Now get out of here."

"I will—"

"Get the fuck out of here before I _make_ you get out."

For a heartbeat, he thought she was going to be stupid enough to argue, but there was finally a flicker of sense in that brain and she left, nose in the air so she could pretend she'd won.

And dammit, if he didn't figure out a way to fix this, she still might.

"Crystal, stay a second."

The younger nurse did, albeit nervously. She probably knew a little bit about the Reynoldses. The family and company put a lot of their charity money into the medical system—they had even before Firth got hurt, and the numbers had only gone up with time.

"Thank you," he said, and she brightened, just a bit. "I wasn't expecting something like this. It didn't occur to me that people would argue with me about—that."

"It's only what Joyce should have done. She should have been giving that injection, not arguing with you about it," she said, and by the tone in her voice, she liked her supervisor about as much as he did.

"I hope I didn't get you into too much trouble."

Her eyes darted towards the bed. "With a Reynolds family member as a witness? I may get a promotion." He chuckled. "The thing is, Mr. Winchester— Joyce is stubborn and a judgmental bitch, pardon my French, and nobody else on nightshift will stand up to her. I can tell you that right now, she's making sure what formula we have is under lock and key where I can't get it. We're supposed to honor any requests, but—"

"She won't, and you're the low man on the totem pole. I get it." The nurse this afternoon hadn't had any problems with it, beyond making Hannah sign the waiver again. But the two extra ready-made bottles she'd given them were already gone, and Marianne would need to be fed at least once before dayshift started, maybe more. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Just—"

"The baby-friendly policy means _we_ can't just hand out formula," Crystal interrupted. "Like I said, we're supposed to honor requests, but she won't. But the policy also says that if parents bring in their own formula, we _have_ to let you use it, unless there's good reason. And that would be something like it being past expiration or really non-standard or causing an allergic reaction or seizure."

"You mean, I can go buy some, and that would be fine."

She nodded. "It's the only way you'll bypass Joyce. I don't know about the other supervisors—"

"The nurses this afternoon didn't pull this."

She didn't look terribly surprised. "Joyce has to actually interact with fewer people on nightshift, if you get my meaning."

He did. Too much seniority to fire without evidence of real wrongdoing, so they'd shuffled her off to weekend nightshift to minimize the trouble she caused. That probably also meant that Joyce was too stupid to leave things alone and would be after him again if she saw him bringing stuff in.

He thought a minute, then felt himself smile. "My mother-in-law made us a diaper bag. Not something you bring in when you're having the baby, but perfectly logical to bring in before discharge. Right?"

Crystal returned the smile. "Perfectly, sir."

There was a 24-hour Target not too far away; he could run by the apartment, pick up the bag—Anne really had made one, but he hadn't seen the point of bringing it to the hospital—and go by the store to get formula. Maybe even all the supplies, too, depending— "How long is she going to be out?"

"Probably a few hours. If she was very tired, she may stay asleep even after it wears off."

Hannah was certainly that. And it shouldn't take more than an hour or so, anyway. Despite Courtney's best attempts, Hannah had put all the stuff on the baby registries; he could access one via his phone and use it for a shopping list. Or he could just grab enough of the ready-made stuff for the night and wait till tomorrow for the heavy shopping. Anne would be here before lunch, and if the rest of the sisters weren't with her, they wouldn't be far behind. Sam didn't want to be here with Courtney trying to start this fight again, for damn sure. Anne or one of the other sisters could get between them and come out undamaged; he couldn't. And now that he knew it wasn't _just_ Hannah being stubborn, that there was a real reason behind it, he wouldn't be able to resist—he _would_ wind up in the middle of the fight.

A thought occurred to him. "Vanity?" he asked.

"Sir?"

"She said it was Hannah's vanity that made her not want to breastfeed. What did she mean?"

Crystal rolled her eyes. "Joyce thinks your wife is trying to keep her breasts perky, or some bullshit. Like I said, she's very judgmental. There was a woman here a couple of months ago, a breast cancer survivor who'd had a double radical mastectomy and literally _couldn't_ breastfeed, and she actually had the gall to _lecture_ the poor woman about how terrible a mother she was."

"Does she have a sister who teaches Lamaze?" Crystal looked blankly at him. "Never mind."

"Anyway, she should be safe from Joyce for at least the rest of the night."

Sam frowned, not understanding—but then remembered. Sedatives in breastfeeding moms tended to be frowned upon.

And if the woman tried to force Hannah to pump— Well, he'd pay good money to see that. Courtney had made the mistake of mentioning a pump at a family dinner, and it had taken Sam, Nick, Andy, _and_ Mike to separate the two of them, with Dean and Firth running additional interference. And Courtney was her _sister_.

Another nurse came to the door. Sam tensed, but apparently this was innocent; one of Crystal's other patients was paging her, and the main desk hadn't wanted to risk pissing him off by calling over the intercom. He waved her on, and took a second to lean against the wall and try to regroup.

Hannah claimed to be a light sleeper. Maybe by Reynolds standards she was, but the truth was, she didn't always wake up all that quickly, especially on safe ground, and especially if she was tired. The jade and his presence would have made this room safe enough, and tired—well, of course she was, she'd just had a baby, threatening half the county with bodily harm in the process. Not to mention, just about everybody had a point on the edge of sleep where they became especially suggestible. Somehow, in forcing Hannah to wake up, that idiot nurse must have managed to hit it. If Hannah had been even a bit more awake—

Well, it wouldn't be _Sam's_ ribs that hurt.

Speaking of which....

He went into the bathroom, pulled up his shirt, and surveyed the damage via the mirror. The skin was already darkening over his ribs on the right side, but it didn't feel like any were broken. The pain meds he'd taken for his fingers weren't particularly strong, but they might be just enough to throw off his assessment; he'd have to let his last dose wear off to be sure.

Of course, right now, his fingers ached dully anyway, despite the drugs, thanks to Hannah getting in a good whack. And shit, he'd hit his head too. When he experimentally touched it, though, the back of his head was tender, but the fingers didn't come away bloody and his hair wasn't matted together, so he must not have broken the skin.

X-rays would probably be a good idea, just to be safe. Maybe a scan or something to get his head checked, though he wasn't sure if that meant x-ray, CT, or MRI these days. Fortunately, he'd landed mostly on his ass; his head and the windowsill hadn't taken his entire weight, or he could be dead right now. He was going to have bruises tomorrow.

Just another reason to be pissed off at that smarmy—

Sam froze, making the bruised muscles down his side hurt that much more. Ananda had seen something. Something really bad, from the way she'd reacted. Was this it? Had she seen him hit his head?

Dammit, now he _was_ getting his head checked. Just because it didn't feel like his previous concussions didn't mean there was nothing wrong.

"Mr. Winchester?" Crystal again, poking her head into the bathroom. "I didn't think to ask, sorry—are you okay? I suddenly remembered Karly telling me at shift change about you and the trunk lid, and I saw your wife get your hand at one point."

"I'm fine."

She came over and peered at his fingers. "I think they're starting to swell some. You should probably have them looked at again."

"Yeah, I was about to head down." She blinked at him. "I hit my head on the windowsill over there when she shoved me, and she got me in the ribs, too."

Crystal winced in sympathy. "I'll call and let them know to expect you. Save you some wait time, so you can get back here quicker."

"That's not—"

"It's Saturday night," she reminded him.

Right. It was still fairly early, and this was a better part of town, but that didn't mean the barfight victims hadn't started to pile up.

"Besides," she went on, "this way, they'll know this isn't a domestic and you're not looking for drugs. You've already had a rough night, you don't need the police investigating you too."

She had a point. "Thanks. Just let me leave her a note, in case she does wake up." _And check on Marianne_ , his brain added, but it turned out that really wasn't necessary. Marianne was not only perfectly fine, but back asleep; either newborns were more resilient than he thought, or no child of Hannah's was going to be seriously disturbed by loud noises.

She'd be fine. And it was more important that he be here when Hannah woke up than for him to sit around here watching her sleep and glaring at the nurses. He scribbled a note on the back of one of the handouts that had come with the room and left it in the top drawer with her tablet and some of the extra jade. If she did wake up before he got back, hopefully that would be enough to mollify her.

Fortunately, none of the nurses did more than look at him as he left. And if any of them had any bright notions about deactivating that chip in his bracelet, Sam wouldn't need telekinesis to level this building.

The ER was already busy, but Crystal's call got him ahead of everybody but two heart attacks and a guy who looked like he'd gotten his nose smashed with a frying pan. Fortunately, the ER staff had completely switched over, so he wasn't facing having his hand attended to by the same resident who'd fixed it last night. This morning. Whenever.

The break in his finger was now slightly displaced, so they re-set it and put him in a wrist splint. Two ribs were cracked, but there really wasn't anything to be done for that. The CT took a little more time—Mr. Frying Pan was being checked for facial fractures—but there was no skull fracture and no signs of bleeding or trauma to his brain, only a decent-sized bump on the back of his head. All in all, he'd gotten off pretty lightly, just the splint and another prescription, this for a muscle relaxant to go with the painkillers.

Sam shrugged into his jacket—carefully, trying to keep the wincing to a minimum—and headed for the parking deck, where he'd moved the Impala after his initial ER visit. Hannah and Marianne should be coming home Monday, and they were going to need supplies. Courtney and Hannah had been having this fight for months—ever since they quit arguing about the wedding bouquet, to be honest—and Courtney had manipulated the shower gifts toward her side of the argument. He hadn't argued or bought the stuff himself because he'd been certain Hannah would change her mind once she held the baby. That's what everybody had said. _Everybody._

_Stupid, Sam,_ he told himself, shoving open the door that led to the parking deck staircase. _Stupid. You should have asked her_ why _she was so against it._ He should have known something was up when she wouldn't tell him. Any time Hannah just dug in and wouldn't explain her reasons, not even to deflect them with jokes, it was serious.

He emerged from the stairs onto the second level. He'd gotten a parking spot close by, since nobody had been here at 2:30 in the morning.

It just didn't make sense, though. That kind of overreaction— It wasn't like Hannah had issues about having her breasts touched, or he would have known about it long before now. He could even remember a few times when bites had been involved, so it wasn't about teeth or mouths, either. Granted, sex was different from being an actual food source—

Sam froze with the keys halfway in the Impala's lock.

Hannah was a hunter. She'd hunted things that _ate people_. And what she'd been screaming, that about not being dead _yet_ —

_Shit, shit,_ shit _._

Sam forced himself to get into the car and dig out his phone—wincing at the ache in his ribs, and swearing when he accidentally hit his broken finger on the wheel. There was only one person besides Hannah who would know if he was right, and she was at least two time zones away— He checked the time, but it wasn't even midnight, and since Jo was still an active hunter when she wasn't helping out at the Roadhouse, she should still be awake. She'd been at the Roadhouse earlier, when he'd started making the notification calls. Hopefully, she hadn't gone out on a hunt—

She hadn't. It was only two rings before she answered. "Hey, Sam," Jo said. "Did you get the flowers Mom sent?"

He had to think on that one. "The yellow things?"

She chuckled. "Yeah, the yellow things. I told her Hannah would fire—um, set fire to anything pink."

"I took the lighter out of the bag a week ago." Jo laughed. "Tell your mom thanks, but I need to ask you something."

Her voice went serious immediately. "Is something wrong? Did a poltergeist get—"

"No, we took plenty of jade in, and she's still got her ring. It's— Do you know if she ever had a hunt go wrong?"

"Every hunter has a hunt go wrong sooner or later," Jo pointed out acidly, "even the mighty Winchesters."

"I know, but this would be specific. Something that ate people."

Did he imagine it, or did Jo hesitate? "What's this about, Sam? You're supposed to be babbling about how perfect your kid is and making me want to smack you, not interrogating me about Hannah's hunts."

"Believe me, that was the plan." He sighed. "One of the nurses decided it was time for Hannah to start trying to nurse, whether she wanted to or not, only the bitch didn't make sure she was all the way awake and either triggered a nightmare or made a dream twist into some kind of panic attack or psychotic break or something. She cracked two of my ribs and knocked me into a wall, and the only reason I didn't get a concussion was sheer dumb luck."

"Jesus."

"She's been against breastfeeding the whole time, we even had fights about it, but she never mentioned _anything_ like this, Jo. She's spent half her life barricaded in a single room, so all I can think is that there has to be something she didn't tell me about a hunt somewhere along the line—"

There was soft swearing on the other end. "That fucking wendigo. I _knew_ she wasn't okay with it."

"Wendigo?" Hannah didn't have wendigo issues. Hannah _teased_ him about wendigos. "I don't—"

"This was early on, right after she started getting the poltergeists under control and got interested in hunting. The summer after Dean and Marcy got married. I needed an extra hand, and she wanted to learn all she could, so what the hell, right? It didn't go _bad_ , really, but— You know how sometimes you see something, maybe it isn't even directly related to the case, but that's what lodges in your head?"

"I think so."

"Well, that's what this was. We tracked it down, found its lair, and there were a couple of bodies that it had already been nibbling on. One was still alive. Didn't make it, but was still alive when we got there. We couldn't have saved him even if we could have teleported him to a hospital, half his insides were gone, but— It shook her _bad_. I thought that was going to be the end of hunting for her, right then and there. And then we never found the damn thing again. We'd gotten wind of it late, and it apparently had a secondary lair somewhere, so it just vanished back into hibernation. Nothing we could do but put it on the calendar for the next guy. You know what an unfinished hunt can do to you."

" _Shit_." Hannah had been hunting for the better part of _ten years_. If this thing was still bothering her after all that time....

"You think she's going to be okay?" Jo asked, sounding worried. "I mean— Do you think she needs another hunter to talk to? A woman? I can call, or have Mom, if you need somebody who's actually had a baby—"

"No. I don't know. Maybe. Probably, as long as we don't force it." He sighed inwardly, then made his voice sound light. "This is why they make formula, right?"

"Don't worry too much about it. Nobody breastfed back when we were born, and we turned out all right." There was a deliberate pause, before she added impishly, "Well, _I_ did, anyway, I'm not sure about you Winchesters."

"Thank you _so_ much."

"Anytime. Oh, and Sam? No more baby pictures for a week, okay?"

"Why not?"

"Because you're giving my mom a serious bout of granny lust, that's why! She's already dragged out the baby books, and she's starting to give me that look."

"What look?"

"The 'time for you to make me a grandma' look. She drags me to a fertility clinic to look at sperm donors, I'm taking it out of your hide."

"Pretty sure Hannah already has designs on that, but you can ask."

"Marriage is making you snarky, Sam. I approve." She paused. "You sure about me calling?"

"For right now, yeah. Thanks, though, I appreciate the offer. I'll let you know, okay?"

"Sounds good. Remember—"

"No more baby pictures. Got it."

She laughed, and Sam disconnected the call—and then sent Ellen another picture, the one he'd gotten of Dean holding Marianne, just to be difficult. And because it would distract him a moment.

Every hunter had it—that one thing that burrowed into their subconscious and gave them recurring nightmares, different from the there-and-done bad dreams that were just the brain trying to process the job. Sometimes it was the thing that had gotten them into hunting—his own nightmares about the aftermath of the fire that killed Jess, for instance. Sometimes it was a specific incident during a hunt. Jo's was being trapped underground. Not buried, she'd been very specific, but _trapped_ , in masonry tunnels, the way Holmes had trapped her.

But sometimes, it was just some random thing that took on this emotional presence all out of proportion to what it had meant at the time. It wasn't something anybody talked about, either, unless it interfered in the job. Years of living in each other's pockets, and Sam didn't know what Dean's worst nightmare was—and even if he had once, chances were it had changed after the demon, once Marcy and the kids were in his life. Sam only knew Jo's because she'd dropped by New Paltz once between hunts and they'd gotten drunk enough to talk about it.

With Hannah, clearly what had manifested was a terror of being eaten alive, spawned by seeing that poor half-eaten victim. And that was how her brain was translating breastfeeding. It wasn't logical, but trauma didn't have to make sense.

She'd known. She'd known this was coming, and she'd tried her best to deal with it on her own.

And he'd ignored her. Ignored the signs, ignored her wishes, ignored _everything_ , arrogantly assuming he knew best and that if he just gave her enough printouts and baby books, she'd come around to his way of thinking.

No wonder she'd been at Courtney's throat this whole time. No wonder she'd kicked him out whenever it came up.

Some husband he was.

***

The first-shift nurse, coming in to update the whiteboard, do a vitals check, and review the chart, woke him from a doze. Sam glanced at his watch, then did some mental math. "Is it normal for Hannah to still be out?" he asked.

She consulted the chart. "It's not unusual," she finally said. "She'll probably be awake by breakfast. Do you guys need more formula?"

Either Crystal had briefed her, or she was more interested in doing her job than toeing the party line. "Not right now, thanks."

He cleaned himself up in the bathroom, emerging just in time to stop a little old lady from trying to wake Hannah up to lecture her _again_. Joyce had apparently put in that Hannah had requested a lactation consultant. That sorry bitch better hope he went home tonight, because if he saw her again, he wasn't going to be held responsible for what he did to her.

The light outside had faded to pale gray when Hannah woke up, tried to push herself up, and fell back onto her pillow with a heartfelt groan.

He went over. "Hey there."

She blinked blearily at him. "Sam?"

"Expecting someone else?" he teased gently.

"I thought— No. Wait a minute." She pushed herself up a little. "Did something happen? I feel kinda hung over."

"You don't remember?"

"Ananda had that meltdown, and then Mama left, and you ate my supper—" She shook her head. "It's all fuzzy after that. Some kind of dream about me trying to—"

The blood drained from her face.

Sam jumped to reassure her. "Hannah, it's—"

"What did I do?" she whispered. "Is Marianne all right? Where— _Did I drop her?_ "

"God, no, Hannah, she's fine! Right there, see?" He stretched over to pull the bassinet a little closer. "Let me—"

"No!"

"What?"

"Not—not until I'm a little steadier, okay? And not so fuzzy."

"Okay." Fuzziness was understandable, so if she didn't want to risk it just now, he'd let it pass. If she was still resisting when the drugs wore off, _then_ he'd worry.

Suddenly she frowned. "Were you in a wrist splint before?"

"Um. No. Not exactly."

"Tell me what I did, Sam. Now."

"I'm _fine_ —"

"That's not what I asked!"

She wasn't going to calm down until she got an explanation. "One of the nightshift nurses decided you were going to nurse whether you wanted or not. She didn't make sure you were awake, so it twisted into some kind of nightmare or panic attack. And you being you, your natural reaction was to throw punches. I took one of them in the hand. The break's a little more separated than it was, that's all. Nothing major."

"And?"

"And what?"

"I know how hard I punch. And _my_ hand hurts a little."

He sighed. "You got me in the ribs. And I fell backwards and hit my head on the windowsill, but—"

" _Jesus_."

"Hannah, I swear, I'm fine. The one nightshift nurse who likes us made me go to the ER to get checked out. I even had a CT scan for my head. I'm fine. This—" He raised his hand "—is more a precaution than anything. It's not even permanent, I can take it off to shower."

"And you're sure—"

"All you did was make her scream a little. She went right back to sleep as soon as everybody quit yelling at everybody else."

She raised an eyebrow. "That woman _yelled_ at you?"

"I yelled right back and name-dropped your parents."

"Atta boy." She reached up to pat his arm. "We'll make a Reynolds of you yet."

"Uh-huh. We're not finished yet, Hannah." He pushed her legs over so that he could sit on the side of the bed. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Whatever drug-haze remained clearly burned off in a rush of anger. "I don't have to justify myself, Winchester," she snapped, "not even to you! They're _my_ tits, and even if I _do_ let you play with them, you don't get a say in what I do with them!"

"That is _not_ what I meant, and you know it. We're supposed to _trust_ each other, Hannah."

"Yeah, I saw how well you backed me up, trying to change my mind every five goddamn minutes."

"And if you take it into your head to kiss a vampire, am I supposed to back you up then, too?" he shot back.

"Is it a cute vampire?"

" _Hannah_."

She sighed. "Can't you just take it on faith?"

"I'm sorry. Have you _met_ my wife?" That got him a rueful smile. "Hannah, it's just— I do this." He made the jade statuette levitate and do a couple of flips before letting it settle back onto the bedside table. "I move things. I can't read minds. I could _never_ read minds."

"And you'll back me up? Even if you don't agree?"

"I...will acknowledge your right to make a stupid decision. As long as it doesn't endanger the baby."

"That's not—"

"I'm not going to always agree with you, Hannah. Hell, if we start agreeing like that, our families will have us committed."

"Fair point."

"I won't promise not to argue, especially if I disagree with it. But— I can do better when it comes to things like this mess with Courtney. The way I should have this time. At the very least, I can do better at heading off morons like that nurse."

"I can't believe that bitch," Hannah muttered. "When I see her—"

"And on that note." He reached down for the diaper bag that Anne had made. "I really am all for this baby-friendly stuff, but when that idiot nurse told me she absolutely _would not_ give us any formula—"

" _What?_ "

"She claimed it was against policy."

Hannah said something creatively obscene. "It is _not_. Shit like that is why we wound up here and not the hospital Deb and Ally use! I went through every fucking maternity ward between Greensboro and Spartanburg!"

"Spartanburg? You were going to drive an hour and a half?"

"No, you were, but I made that plan before I saw the way you were panicking over everything."

"Uh-huh. So—with some prompting from the only decent nurse on nightshift, and we really ought to see if we can get her a promotion or at least a nice tip—I decided it was an excellent time to remember that we'd forgotten the diaper bag." He set the bag on the bed. Hannah just frowned at it, confused. "She told me that if we brought it in, they couldn't stop us." With a flourish, he pulled out a pack of ready-to-use formula bottles, identical to the ones the nurse had given them yesterday afternoon.

She chuckled. "You spent the night shopping, didn't you?"

"I only left long enough to go get the bag and two of these and came straight back. _Then_ I researched. I'll do the heavy shopping this afternoon, so there'll be more room in here for your sisters."

"Coward."

"Damn straight." He set the pack in her lap.

She dredged up a smirk. "Baby's first six-pack."

Some of the fear wrapped around his heart relaxed, just a bit. She'd be okay. "Let's never put it that way again."

"You have absolutely no sense of humor, Winchester."

"And you love me for it."

"You know, I think I just might," she said, pulling him in for a kiss.

"Good morning!" a chipper voice interrupted.

Sam winced. "I knew I should have used the holy water," he muttered, standing up. "I asked you to leave and _not come back_." That last came out perilously close to a growl.

The lactation consultant glided across the room, completely blind to the paired glares she was getting, and didn't acknowledge a word Sam said, like he wasn't even there. "Your silly husband told me you weren't going to breastfeed, and I just _knew_ that was ridiculous," she said to Hannah, in something that was perilously close to baby-talk. "Mommies always want the very best for their babies! He'll just have to share you for awhile!"

Hannah looked at Sam, the question in her eyes.

Most days, he'd try to rein her in. Today?

"Sic her," he said, and picked up Marianne, pulling that ridiculous hat down over her ears and cuddling her close.


End file.
